Updated YC Company Hosting Stats • Hacker News Board

Re: Updated YC Company Hosting Stats

#31

Post by brett » Tue, Jun 16, 2009, 9:56 PM UTC

webwright wrote: post #15

It'd be a nice touch to link to the sites in question. I'm ashamed to say that I didn't recognize all of the YC companies on that list! :-)

True. They're linked in the FAQ: http://ycombinator.com/faq.html

Re: Updated YC Company Hosting Stats

#32

Post by drusenko » Tue, Jun 16, 2009, 10:17 PM UTC

mc wrote: post #17

Thanks for compiling that list. I didn't know about SoftLayer. I noticed the list mentions Justin.tv hosts itself. Aren't they built on Amazon EC2 and S3?

From what I can tell, Justin.tv and us (Weebly) are the only ones on that list who own their own IP blocks

Re: Updated YC Company Hosting Stats

#33

Post by edawerd » Tue, Jun 16, 2009, 10:18 PM UTC

This might be a little bit off topic, but I've always thought that it could make some sense to have a YC colocation. With enough companies, it could be more cost-effective than everyone getting their own slicehost. Of course, there would be a ton of other headaches involved like backups, outages, etc, but a lot of YC companies seem to be doing just fine administering their own boxes in a colo. I know it wouldn't be for everyone, but maybe a standard stack of software/configuations could be readily available for new YC companies. We all seem to have had the same frustrations with configuring webservers, mail servers (ouch!), tweaking database servers, etc. It could be yet another benefit of joining the YC mafia =)

Re: Updated YC Company Hosting Stats

#34

Post by wheels » Tue, Jun 16, 2009, 11:07 PM UTC

dannyr wrote: post #22

I wonder why no YC companies are on Google App Engine.

It's only been 4 months since they announced commercial licensing. Before that you'd have been a nut to build your business on it. Pretty much any announced YC company started development more than 4 months back.

Re: Updated YC Company Hosting Stats

#35

Post by ALee » Tue, Jun 16, 2009, 11:16 PM UTC

Before this, everyone was on AWS, did YC companies get a deal with Slicehost?

Re: Updated YC Company Hosting Stats

#36

Post by jbr » Tue, Jun 16, 2009, 11:30 PM UTC

mdasen wrote: post #12

carbon8 wrote: post #2

Why only 1 on linode? Is there a reason?

There are several. Slicehost has been doing Xen hosting longer. Linode is older, but they were using User Mode Linux (not nearly as good as Xen) for a long time. Slicehost got the mindshare by getting to Xen hosting first. Slicehost is local to all their data centers. Whether in St Louis or Dallas/Ft Worth, their employees actually work there. Linode's employees all work in South Jersey, 2 hours from their Newark dat…

> Slicehost can more easily upgrade your plan. Linode has to switch your box should you want to move plans. Often Slicehost can move plans while keeping you on the same box.

I'm on slicehost, and when I upgraded ("resized") a slice, it was not a "live" operation. I don't know whether it's physically the same machine, but the old slice had to be shutdown, file system copied, and a new slice booted.

From the "Resize your slice" page:

Step 3: Current slice is shut down and migrated You will experience a downtime varying in proportion to fullness of the filesystem.

Re: Updated YC Company Hosting Stats

#37

Post by patio11 » Wed, Jun 17, 2009, 12:07 AM UTC

axod wrote: post #14

mdasen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several. Slicehost has been doing Xen hosting longer. Linode is older, but they were using User Mode Linux (not nearly as good as Xen) for a long time. Slicehost got the mindshare by getting to Xen hosting first. Slicehost is local to all their data centers. Whether in St Louis or Dallas/Ft Worth, their employees actually work there. Linode's employees all work in South Jersey, 2 hours from their Newark dat…

>> "They aren't that much more expensive" Bandwidth overage on slicehost is .30/GB. On Linode it's .10/GB. That's a fairly massive difference.

For some businesses, the economic value of a marginal gigabyte is, say, (does math) $50.

Santa, for Christmas this year:

1) I'd like to use all of my 500 GB quota, every month.

2) I'd like to start paying overage charges. REALLY BIG OVERAGE CHARGES.

Re: Updated YC Company Hosting Stats

#38

Post by jmtame » Wed, Jun 17, 2009, 12:36 AM UTC

carbon8 wrote: post #2

Why only 1 on linode? Is there a reason?

Linode is great. Using them for Hacker News Directory (hndir.com) and several other sites.

Re: Updated YC Company Hosting Stats

#39

Post by rdl » Wed, Jun 17, 2009, 4:21 AM UTC

edawerd wrote: post #33

This might be a little bit off topic, but I've always thought that it could make some sense to have a YC colocation. With enough companies, it could be more cost-effective than everyone getting their own slicehost. Of course, there would be a ton of other headaches involved like backups, outages, etc, but a lot of YC companies seem to be doing just fine administering their own boxes in a colo. I know it wouldn't be f…

I think an easier way to do this is for a forward-thinking hosting provider, colo, etc. in the bay area to offer discounted or free hosting to YC companies (free during the YC period, maybe not after); a few months of free hosting to have a shot at a successful site as customer would be more than worth it.

(alternatively, convertible debt)

Piggybacking on YC's selection process seems like a good business model in general.

Re: Updated YC Company Hosting Stats

#40

Post by jbyers » Wed, Jun 17, 2009, 4:39 AM UTC

tdavis wrote: post #13

anuraggoel wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you switch to Rackspace?

Monetary reasons.

Could you expand on that? :) We've been happily hosted at SoftLayer for a few years. Our negotiated rates were quite a bit better than Rackspace the last time I checked, curious if their pricing has come down.